Sharon Olds | Criticism

The deeply felt cycle of poems [in The Dead and the Living] concerns the universal experiences of death, both public and private, and life…. From executions in Iran to her own miscarriage, Olds writes about the loss of life with passion, yet control. Her language is direct, her imagery vivid, her subjects credible. There is a poem about her aging grandmother, still witty and full of life, another about her mean grandfather who drank, and her father who resembled him. In "Poems for the Living," Olds confesses her mother's fierce hatred of her husband and the influence of this on the children. In a gentler vein, she tells of her own children growing up, and the depth of a mother's love. This admirable volume is the poet's second collection of verse.

A review of "The Dead and the Living," in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 224, No. 20, November 11, 1983, p. 40.